I was looking on the Gunboards Forum this morning and did a search for "MG42". One of the items that came up was the differences between the different model designations, I know there was a discussion about this several weeks ago so I thought I would post the information. I can't vouch for the info, but wanted to pass it along. The response is as follows:

"The sequence from MG 42 to MG 3 is:

MG 42 used by the new Bundeswehr from 57 into early 60s.MG 42/59 was the reverse engineered MG 42 - in 8MM - put into service in very late 59 to replace aging MG 42s. The MG 42/59s were later converted to 7.62 x 51 NATO before being phased out and are then designated,MG 1 which is always in NATO 7.62 x 51 cal. There was a short lived 7.62 x 51 calMG 2, but it wasn't widely adopted and was quickly superseded by the,MG 3 which is an improved MG 2 .

The most notable difference is the flash hider. The MG 3 has a variable rate of fire - depending on the bolt and buffer combination - of from 700 to 1500 rpm.Since the MG 3 came into service about 25 years ago, I seriously doubt there are any MG 42/59s or MG 1s still in service in the Bundeswehr.

This sounds logical; any comments?

Edit: moved to stickies , paragraphs added to make easier to read, colorized, spell checked, and info updated .

MG1A2- MG1A1 modified to accept disintegrating US M13/DM13 links additional to using Gurt-34/DM-1 belts; also at this time the "heavy' bolt carrier was adopted due to request by participating partner countries (i.e., Italy) which then was identified OUTSIDE the Bundeswehr as the......

MG42/59 (See above) Same gun as the Bundeswehr MG1A2 if it has the heavy bolt carrier installed.

MG3- Fully matured and adopted standard. Several sub-variants of the MG3 exist, mostly as experimental or application-specific designs. Only Germany and Pakistan produce the actual MG3, all others producers, licensed or not, actually produce some close form of the MG42/59 with various incomplete notions of the actual MG3 standard.

It is probably a reasonable argument the Austrian idea of the MG3, the Steyr MG-74, could be rightly designated as the "MG4" standard as it represents an entire new level of improvements over the actual MG3, and being the last new-production variant of the basic MG42/59, is probably as far as the basic design is ever going to go. OTOH, the Swiss probably took the whole concept farther backward than thought possible when they reverted to the notion of milled receivers again for the excellent and truly superb MG51 series.